How can I integrate an imagery exam in Sv into my LCA ?

Question

Dear community,

I begin in OpenLCA and, for my thesis about dental implantology, I have to do an LCA, and the cone beam computer tomography (cbct) is in the flow chart. But the exam is in Sievert or Gray, not Becquerel, while the unit in OpenLCA for radioactivity is obviously in Bq.

So my question : is there a way to integrate the ionization of this exam into my LCA ?

Best regards,

Sylvain

Answer 1

Okay with ReCiPe 2016, the conversion table between man.Sv <-> kBq of Co-60 is taken from "Human health damages due to ionising radiation in life cycle impact assessment" 2020, R. Frischknechta, A. Braunschweigb, P. Hofstetterc, P. Suterd.

We can see 1.1x10^-8 man.Sv/kBq Co-60 emission to air.

So, for 168µSv dose from a CBCT examination of 1 patient, the equivalent in kBq of Co-60 is : (168x10^-6)/(1.1x10^-8) = 15272,7272727273 kBqCo-60_air. Now I can add "Co-60 emission to air, unspecified" elementary flow with the number of "amount" found before, in my examination process.

Fixed it ! 

Answer 2

Hi Sylvain, interesting question, the answer is not so easy, I found e.g. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/286399/how-to-convert-bq-g-to-sievert-dose-and-how-to-get-values-sv-bq - basically I would say the radiation exam in Sievert measures something else than radioactivity, namely the exposure, while radioactivity in Bq is about an activity per time, literally even. Also, LCA "practicalities", you will need an elementary flow representing the impact to calculate it - you could somehow construct this yourself, I am not aware this exists so far. Other comments are welcome here especially I think. Thank you!

Andreas

Comments

Thank you for your answer it really helps me a lot ! What a tough formula...